eMac & Power Mac G4 price gap

messiahmessiah
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere.



I had reason to cost an eMac earlier today (a product family I've never been interested in before today) and I was shocked at the price difference when comparing a 1GHz eMac to a similarly spec'ed 1GHz Power Mac G4.



eMac Combo

£799.00 inc. VAT

17" flat CRT display

1GHz PowerPC G4

128MB of RAM

60GB UltraATA drive

DVD/CD-RW drive

ATi Radeon 7500

32MB DDR video memory

56K internal modem

Airport Extreme ready



Power Mac G4

£1,149.00 inc. VAT

1GHz PowerPC G4

256MB of RAM

60GB UltraATA drive

DVD-CD-RW drive

nVidia GeForce4 MX

64MB DDR video memory

FireWire 800

56K internal modem

Airport Extreme ready



The Power Mac G4 costs £350 more, and it doesn't have the 17" display?



Now I realise that the Power Mac G4 has an additional 128MB of RAM, which I can buy for £16.44 inc. VAT (I'm sure that Apple gets them a lot cheaper), I don't know how much more it costs for Apple to put a 1MB L3 cache on the CPU daughtercard, and likewise I'm not sure how much more it costs Apple for the additional chipsets/PCI/AGP/ADC connectors. But I'd be very surprised if it costs £350 + the cost of a 17" CRT?



So either the eMac is the bargain of the century, or the Power Mac G4 is fantastically larger rip-off than I originally thought.



Am I missing something here?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Actually, the eMac *is* a really good deal right now.



    But remember you're also paying for the expansion capabilities of the tower, regardles of how much the components cost. I believe I recall (hopefully Matsu will correct me if I'm wrong) that the towers have the highest profit margin of all, PowerBooks being 2nd.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    frawgzfrawgz Posts: 547member
    The PowerMac also had double the video memory and FireWire 800.



    I suppose your point stands. The problem with Apple's choice of chips is that they have to artificially create a gap between consumer and pro machines. If the consumer machines are to have respectable power, then the pro machines won't look like a very good deal. Otherwise, you can cripple your consumer machines to make your pro machines look much better.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    thereubsterthereubster Posts: 402member
    Whenever this happens (low end mac looks great> makes high end mac look underpowered and overpriced) it means that the high end will get bumped (or this time hopefully replaced ) soon after. Apple does this consistantly year after year so theres no reason to think they will change now. Its standard marketing practise to use a weakness in your product line which you cant do anything about (yet) to make the rest of your products look like a really good deal - esp. when you know no-one is buying the high end anyway (look at powermac sales figures.... )
  • Reply 4 of 5
    messiahmessiah Posts: 1,689member
    So it's not just me then?



    Any clues as to where I could start looking for the sales figures and margins that you guys are referring to? That would be cool!



    Cheers,



    Cam
  • Reply 5 of 5
    thereubsterthereubster Posts: 402member
    Apple results figures (I think you can get them from the website) or search Mac news sites they always have them
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